[QUOTE=miakoda;4271100]
My hanoverian mare was just released from the Equine Medical Center for a possible case of PHF. I have had her 3 weeks!!! The bill was almost 3K, and that was because I begged them to let her come home and let my vet finish treatment…so that bill is still adding up. She never had a fever the entire time she was there, she had one 2 hours before at home, and given banamine…so she was responding well…[/QUOTE]
Only 3k for three weeks in Equine ER?? That is great.
In 2001, my husband spent almost $60k on his stallion :eek: :eek: :eek: (god knows what it would have cost today). The horse started stopping while at WEF (and he never stopped), so he had some vets look at him in FL, couldn’t find anything. Shipped him back home to VA, had multiple vets look at him. Took him to Morven Park for them to look at him, they weren’t sure. Finally they opened him up, and found out that he had only a 20% functioning liver, and there was nothing they could do about it. So they sewed him back him, and he was sent to a friend’s large farm in KY for the 6 months he had left. Such a shame, he was a beautiful horse (he did both the Level 5/6’s and the First Year Hunters).
just dropped upwards of $6K on my 22 year old mostly retired old guy. told myself I couldn’t do it when the vet quoted me the price, cried all night, called them up the next day and said OK do it, only to have them tell me oh by the way, he has a massive heart murmur and chances are good he’ll die on the table. I did it anyway and he’s alive and recovering well.
Wow - these stories are amazing!
One of the worst weeks of my life…
Day 1. My husband was very ill with a chronic disease that was just diagnosed.
Day 2. One of our Corgis was let out to pee - saw a cat and chased it into the street and was hit by a car.
Day 3. Came home at night to find my very first show horse down and sweating. Took her to the vet and found out she was in severe colic. Ultrasound revealed tumors and she would have to have surgery with a small chance of survival (could be cancer) - she was over 20 and I painfully opted to put her down. I was broken…I cried and cried and cried. I spilled my guts to the poor vet about my week and although I did not ask…it seemed the more I cried and spilled my guts…he kept chopping down the bill. In the end - I paid about $400.00 for everything including euth and burial! They have my business for life.
That is not the largest bill I have ever had…but the most memorable one. Largest was about $1000.00
Currently at ~$6,600 and counting for sesamoid ligment desmitis in hind legs. Rigorous lameness exam, 3 rounds of shockwave both legs, and one ultrasound checkup so far to ok trotting plus injections.
Thank jebus for insurance. They have been really great. I also had a ~$3,000 claim on this horse only a few years ago for fractured splint (he plays like he is made of titanium, even when practically living on air). The agent did say that nowadays the underwriting companies are getting skittish and refusing renewal for horses with recent giant claims.
I will ALWAYS insure any horse I own for major medical, no matter what their purchase price was. I don’t want to have to blink when it comes time to make a decision about medical care due to cost (within my version of reason).
To the poster who asked, I believe you have to insure for mortality in order to also buy major medical, but you can choose a minimum mortality value if all you really want is medical.
God forbid, but even with insurance, I think if I ever have another non-potentially-life-threatening lameness with this horse, I will consider the “turn him out and wait” option. I can’t take the drama anymore.
…only my accountant knows for sure. Suffice to say it is a lot, but I still consider ourselves blessed to have so many good vets here for us, and for the option of sending them to WSU. Hence my “breeding business”.
[QUOTE=Lori B;4272481]
That hematoma video… How is that horse now?[/QUOTE]
She’s fantastic, thanks for asking! 
She has very small scar at each incision point, but otherwise she’s back to “normal”.
I can’t believe it’s almost been a year since then. Wow, time flies.
Around $500 for the vet to sew up my DH’s horse’s ear. He managed to peel the skin off like a banana by getting it caught in his bucket somehow. I have lovely graphic pictures:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/honeybee1999/johnnyear.jpg
And after the nice vet sewed him back up:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/honeybee1999/johnnyearafter.jpg
It healed without even a scar.
Rudys bill went to just over $3000 in about 8 days. Went in for hock injections at $550 and 4 days later was diagnosed with EPM and started on Marquis, 3 days after that he was put down.
About 4 months after that Lola had her yearly shots and coggins and 1 week later ruptured a ligament in her front leg. Her bill went to about $3000.
Ive got it whittled down to just over $1k now.
[QUOTE=drmgncolor;4272132]
oh I guess it was somewhere around $1,500 total to drain this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_P96Ox5-g
So far, I’ve been lucky.[/QUOTE]
That was an exciting video! Lucky for you to have gotten yours while it was still hematoma. My horse had the SAME thing in his shoulder after getting kicked in the pasture. Vet #1 wanted to just give bute and said the hematoma would resorb. After a few days of fever, the big vet clinic in Ocala where we went next decided that the shoulder was probably broken and took x-rays (it wasn’t, surprise!). I then begged them to drain it, and they refused, again, saying it was just hematoma and would resorb (I was pretty ticked at this point). Finally, as we were traveling and on the road, we stopped at Pine Top Farm in Georgia for the other horses to compete and the local large animal vet took one look at it and said, “Why the hell hasn’t anyone drained this yet?” He did it right then, and it was so full of pus and nastiness…it was quite the sight to see drained. It took another full week for all the crap to drain out of it, and all kinds of fibrous tissue were blopping out of it along the way.
So the first vet, because it was an emergency call, cost around $250, the x-rays and eval. at the big, expensive vet clinic in Ocala was about $500, and the nice local large animal vet in Thomson, Georgia only charged $100 for the draining and some antibiotics.
Cumulatively, over the 20 years I’ve owned him, Vern has cost me near $5K not counting the routine stuff. Colic surgery in 1991 was $1800 - I remember the exact price because there was no way I could afford that at the time and thought I’d have to have him put down.
My H/J trainer footed the bill and I repaid her.
In 2002 he had exploratory knee surgery for another $2K and 2 years ago he developed the Abcess From He** that lasted 8 months and ran up some fancy bills between the vet visiting weekly and the glue-on shoes he needed for 3 months.
My other horses have come nowhere near that, of course I haven’t had any of them as long as I’ve had Vern…yet… 
lets see i bought a foal 5 years ago at a year and a half old ended up needing major corrective shoes along with surgery. we spent almost 2 years going to the vet hospital every 5 weeks to have xrays done, along with corrective shoes. with only the hope of her being pasture sound i spent over 30,000. in those two years, in hopes of a pasture sound young horse. as a 5 year old she has turned into a great riding horse and hasnt shown any lameness issues till last week. i call her my 35,000. dollar horse. would i do it again yes.
15,000$ worth of colic surgry.
About $12,000 over the course of the year when Reuben developed equine granulomatous disease. Included lameness exams for the ligament injuries secondary to the illness, topical medications for the leukocytoclastic vasculitis secondary to the illness, steroids, antibiotics, pentoxifylline, two skin biopsies and labwork, 10 days in the vet hospital, farm calls every 2-3 weeks, and, eventually, euthanasia and disposal. That figure would be a lot higher if my vet hadn’t given me a LOT of breaks on the bills, for which I’m still incredibly grateful. That figure also doesn’t include the cost of stall board (Reuben was on pasture board until he had to be confined for medical reasons), bandaging materials (needed new bandages on 2 legs every day for months and months), additional feed (couldn’t absorb nutrients as well as the disease progressed), and extra bedding (he needed very deep bedding because of the skin ulceration).
Don’t regret a penny. :sadsmile:
Brutal question
Yes, I get to join the over 20K club. I had an older horse that was insured with surgical coverage. I thought I may be a few thousand out of pocket but since I had insurance, didn’t even think twice. He had a terirble time post-surgery with serious complications and by the time the bill staring getting really horrendous - of course I had to continue with all that he had been through. After 32 days the bill was $22,???. My insurance company sent me a check for $3,200 and only increased it to $5,300 after I threatened to call the insurance commissioner. I don’t regret spending the money because I really loved the horse but I am not wealthy and had to take a second job to cover the bills.
I also had a friend who bought a new horse, the horse coliced a few days later, had two colic surgeries, and then died. He had only ridden him a couple of times.
Hoooboy… in one fell swoop, probably $3,000 for a multi-day stay at the vet hospital with diagnostics; had to have the horse put down. 
And then, over the course of about a year and a half, easily $6,000 over those months trying to diagnose and then treat my boy with navicular/rotation/ringbone. Is there an emoticon for feeling sick to your stomach? Fortunately, that’s what the credit card is/was for, and even more fortunately, we were able to pay it off. I’m even more fortuante that my horse can live in my backyard and be my very, very cute light riding horse/pet horse.
Owie.
Interesting thread. My largest single bill was the colic surgery, close to 8k when it was all said and done. Now the ironic part is that prior to this I swore I would never do it, for financial reasons, and for the trauma/recovery for the horse. Well, reason flys out the window at 2AM as you are watching your 7-year-old horse in pain, and I did debate it for about 20 minutes, shed many a tear, and handed over the credit card. All this for a 1,500 horse that was not insured.
Years ago, I was spending a sizeable amount per month for maintence of my now retired show horse, but it didn’t hit home until we were moving, and my daughter (who was 8 at the time) was helping to get my paperwork organized before we moved so I could pack it, and for fun she totalled up the vet bills for the year. It was close to 4k just for a single year, with nothing major wrong.
I think this is good information for any horse owner to have, so that they can sort of pre-plan how much they would comfortably spend to save a horse. But refer back to my first paragraph, sometimes it just doesn’t matter.
I just paid for a successful frontonasal surgery as well, for $3,000 at the UW Madison (WI) Veterinary hospital. But that is just one hospital bill… not included was the two previous local vet visits (one telling me he was fine, the next telling me he might die from a glutteral pouch infection holy panic), one visit to another lower level hospital for a sedation, endoscope- to find nothing but more questions, and then 4 x-rays of his skull… to only tell me I needed to drive three hours to the UW Madison Hospital. Granted, my local vet did say to maybe just start at the higher level surgical hospital instead of going to the lesser. BUT Dapper is 20, retired and hasnt been trailered much more than 20 mins in the last 10 years… So the daunting 2 hour trailer ride swayed my decision. Not a poor decision, but one that i wont make again!
All said and done, I’m probably at $5,000. Would I do it again? YUP, he has been with me for 20 years, and deserves every penny. I do not have him insured, though I dont think they insure after 15 years of age anymore.
I just paid for a successful frontonasal surgery as well, for $3,000 at the UW Madison (WI) Veterinary hospital. But that is just one hospital bill… not included was the two previous local vet visits (one telling me he was fine, the next telling me he might die from a glutteral pouch infection holy panic), one visit to another lower level hospital for a sedation, endoscope- to find nothing but more questions, and then 4 x-rays of his skull… to only tell me I needed to drive three hours to the UW Madison Hospital. Granted, my local vet did say to maybe just start at the higher level surgical hospital instead of going to the lesser. BUT Dapper is 20, retired and hasnt been trailered much more than 20 mins in the last 10 years… So the daunting 2 hour trailer ride swayed my decision. Not a poor decision, but one that i wont make again!
All said and done, I’m probably at $5,000. Would I do it again? YUP, he has been with me for 20 years, and deserves every penny. I do not have him insured, though I dont think they insure after 15 years of age anymore.
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